Gabriel Dax, the hero of William Boyd’s latest spy thriller, is one of literature’s reluctant spies: good, solitary men who would happily continue pursuing their hobbies if only their beastly handlers would let them. In Dax’s case, his day job is as a travel writer – which allows Boyd to regularly indulge his evident affection for the florid turn of phrase. On the very first page of Cold Sunset, the third novel in the series, Dax describes the Pacific, admired from 1960s Santa Monica, as ‘slate-grey, mouse-grey, dirty dishwater-grey’, and even ‘zinc, ash, pewter’.
To Boyd’s credit, the novel can be read as a standalone, but it’s probably best enjoyed after books one and two. Those explored Dax’s sad past (dead mother, killed in a fire), and his descent into the murky world of spycraft. At this point, Dax is working both for MI6 and an oddly credulous KGB, and his mission, as set out by his ineffably sexy spy-boss Faith Green, is to exfiltrate a secret agent from Moscow before the Russians realise they have a rat in their midst. Along the way, Dax is hunted by an assassin with a justified grudge, recruits a nice local girl to keep his Sussex cottage spruce and finds time for a tryst with an alluring American.
Despite the pace and gratifying volume of incident in the book, it is not free of introspection. Dax spends much of the novel preoccupied with Faith, who treats him mean and keeps him keen until the genuinely surprising denouement. Still, much of the pleasure of the book is found in Dax’s sheer competence. He is an excellent, natural spy: good at following people without them cottoning on, good at laying traps, good at shooting to kill.
Boyd is also satisfyingly hot on the material world his characters move in, from the cars they drive to the clothes they slink around in. Particular care is taken with Faith’s wardrobe (at one point she is in ‘a pale-biscuit, bloused jacket with a wide Quaker collar’ – yum). Dax’s outfits are also carefully itemised: tweed in town, but classic spy-wear in Moscow (‘grey herringbone tweed coat, a scarf and two sweaters’).
This is not a book likely to win over those still hoping Boyd will produce another Any Human Heart. It feels rather quickly written, some twists are predictable, and the spy-thriller tropes do fall thick and fast (women ‘saunter’, men drink to oblivion). But the novel is doing what it wants to be doing well and had me gripped. The ending, by the way, feels more like a ‘to be continued’ – so although the series has been billed as a trilogy, I’d eat my (felt, sand-coloured) trilby if it finishes here.
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